by buffybot_in_beirut » Wed Dec 01, 2010 8:36 pm
Don't have my LP guide at hand, but a few years ago I stayed in the creatively named "Hotel de Djibouti" on a roundabout a few 100 meters down from the market/bus station, diagonally opposite the Einguela post office branch. It's your typical francophone sub-Saharan "half-star" hotel and I think it has been a travellers' favourite for ages. Cheap enough (for Djibouti), not a nasty fleapit, reasonably friendly, a/c works (though at this time of the year you may not need it?!). Much better than a guesthouse in the market area (don't recall name), which was advertised as the cheapest place to stay in town, yet only about 10% cheaper than the "Djibouti" - not worth the difference!
French embassies can issue visa on behalf of Djibouti although, as coldharvest wrote, many nationalities seem to have become eligible for a visa upon arrival in the last few years.
I thought Djibouti was great for a few days, just for the hell of it, and I was there in mid-summer! The city centre has some pretty colonial (crumbling) houses as well as little snack bars were you can eat "cheaply" (well not Cairo-cheap, but no need to spend tens of dollars). If you can spend 10 or 20 dollars on a meal, go to the African quarter for some oven-baked, Yemeni-style fish ("poisson yemenite") - yummy!
If you are in Lebanon, check out an extremely bizarre connection that I discovered recently: African Express Airways reportedly flies from Amman (of all places) to Djibouti, and then on to Kenya.